Solar ‘smart’ homes aim to slash energy use by 70%

Armed with a grab bag of high-tech gadgets and a name that sounds like a league of superheroes, the “Building America Team” is gearing up to battle home energy waste in a pilot program in the Western U.S. The team — which is part of a Department of Energy project — includes technologists from GE’s Industrial Solutions, Appliances, Lighting and Research divisions and partners that include major utilities, homebuilders and local communities. The goal is to slash the $1,240 per year in electricity costs that the average U.S. household pays by more than $850 per year. As GreenTech.com notes: “The test houses, part of the Department of Energy’s Building America Program, will be a mix of retrofit and new construction. The goal of the DOE program is to cut energy use by 30 percent, but GE and its partners think they can reach 70 percent if roof top solar panels are added to the mix.”

Digital energy: At the heart of the new project is GE’s recently unveiled Nucleus, a home energy command center. It delivers real-time energy usage consumption data to PCs and smart phones and serves as the hub of conversations taking place between smart meters and smart appliances.

According to the DOE, residential buildings account for about 21.5 percent of the nation’s primary energy consumption and carbon emissions, and about 38 percent of electricity. Of the residential buildings in existence today, about 85 percent were constructed prior to the year 2000 –– and in general, the older the building, the less stringent the applicable energy code at the time of construction. As a result, many older residences may be poorly insulated, suffer from excessive air leakage, have old and inefficient mechanical equipment and appliances, and have a high percentage of incandescent lights.

Light touch: Nucleus can be used to program each day of the week directly from a PC. The technology was unveiled in July when GE announced its “ecomagination Challenge: Powering the Grid.” Backed by $200 million in venture capital funds from GE and its partners, the goal is to find the best ideas from researchers and entrepreneurs that will help accelerate the adoption of smart grid technologies.

For the $5 million DOE project — which will focus on Phoenix, Sacramento, and San Diego — the GE team will be integrating a package of roof top solar panels, smart grid-enabled energy-efficient appliance and lighting products, and the Nucleus Home Energy Manager.

In a guest post today on GE’s Global Research blog, Dr. Rob Hammon, who directs R&D at energy consultant ConSol — which is leading the Building America team — notes that the new project builds off of the knowledge gained from a previous collaboration with GE and homebuilder Premier Homes in Sacramento. The homes, known as Premier Gardens, “demonstrated persistent energy and bill savings — 50 percent to 60 percent compared to the average of the [nearby] control community,” he writes. “It was also noted that the Premier Gardens community started sales about a month after the neighboring community and sold out about a month earlier, further demonstrating consumer interest and their possible preference for efficient, solar homes.”

Making history: The “Building America team” includes California energy consultants ConSol, Washington State University, Arizona State University, University of California at Davis, Ennovationz, Sacramento Municipalities Utilities District, San Diego Gas & Electric, Arizona Public Service, Pulte Homes, Salt River Project and Bank of America. The Nucleus history screen is shown above. It stores up to three-years’ worth of energy consumption information.

* Read the announcement
* Read coverage from CNET, GreenTech, FastCompany; AP, GetSolar and TechCrunch

Learn more in these GE Reports stories:
* “This sizzling summer, the grid wants heat relief, too”
* “Eco Challenge: 4 weeks & more than 950 ideas later”
* “Unveiled: $200M challenge, EV charger, smart monitor”
* “EU innovation survey IDs gaps as GE Challenge debuts”
* “Merging scale & innovation in GE’s $200M challenge”